First off, this subject could be quite volatile to some so my apologies.

I have a friend and he's one good coder but can't practice because of his religion. Instead he's now trying to find work as diverse as construction worker or a gardener. He still lives with his parents because of that. For much of the year, they had no electricity because that's not a priority.

He just emailed me he wants out but can't. I have no idea why he can't just "walk away", find a better job since he's a good coder.

I'm a catholic myself( have muslim, Christian, agnostic and athiest friends) but his religion's rigidity is just nuts.

It's very difficult to walk away from family and community in such a tight-knit culture like in the Philippines. I'm guessing he can't just walk away from his religion because doing that would mean detatching himself from the life that he knows as well. If he wants to pursue a career in IT, it seems as though he'll have to do it without the support of the community that he is currently in, which will be very difficult.

If he has the mental and emotional fortitude to detatch himself from his current life to pursue doing what he loves and is good at, then I think he should try pursuing his programming career and you should be a part of his support system as he tries to reshape his life.

On the other hand, if his current life is one that he cannot detach himself from - maybe for his own sake or the sake of his loved ones - then he will have to sacrifice working with computers.

I have a lot of practising Christians/Catholics in my workplace (with me being the only one who isn't). I still can't think of anything we do that might cause an issue for any employees, even our Christmas parties got turned into an "end of year festive celebration" which is fine by me. If there's something offensive about the OS being used, you can always go for an alternative like Jesux

As anti-religion as I am, I think this has a lot less to do with religion and more to do with some pretty hardwired human instincts around community. While I can't personally imagine taking a family like that over my own life, it's clear that other people aren't all wired the same. As for advice, I got nothing, other than that if he knows he has a friend who won't judge him for his beliefs (even if they're wacky), it might make it easier for him to decide later.

I'm speaking as a plain Christian here, so some of this may not seem right to other religions.

IMO, if religion is getting in the way of doing something (good) with your life, you have got something wrong.

Don't just take it from me, but here's what I would do in that situation:

-Ask him what he thinks of the situation. What does he want to do?-Tell him to tell his family his thoughts, how he feels etc., and ask them what they think, and what they think he should do.-Hopefully he can sort things out from there.

Well according to the TS, his friend "wants out but can't," so in terms of what he wants to do, I'm getting from that that the friend wants to pursue programming.

Although I just assumed that the family and community has already rejected the idea, but that's not explicitly said in the OP so it may be worthwhile to suggest that he sit down and have a heart-to-heart with his family if he hasn't done so yet.

Parents can be tough sometimes. My parents aren't supportive in terms of what I wanted to do. In these cases, I suppose it is very difficult for us to actually 'tell' you what you must do. There are no rights and wrongs for this, if he really wants to choose IT as his career, like said above, if he manages to persevere through the tough times he is facing today, he should be able to become an IT guy.

But as for you, if you are his true friend, then you should give him as much support as he need. After all, parents can't control their kids forever and I believe this is true for any religion. One day he will be free to do whatever he wants to do.

A religion is a set of some cultures and some common habits. A religion doesn't force anyone to do any thing. If it forces, it's not a religion. Tell him that if he wants to do coding, do that. If he doesn't want to code, let him leave. I think the problem is not the religion but his parents who aren't aware of the software side. There are people who think that development is bad, just use them. When I said to my friends that I wanted to become a game developer, they laughed at me and said stories about children getting addict to playing them. This is an impression that people has but is not completely true. Yeah, there maybe games that say steal this without being noticed and all, there are also the ones which say to catch the thieves and all. I believe that this maybe the case in himself and again your friend has another problem too, he is unable to communicate his intention to them.

Say him to First communicate this problem to your parents. They maybe thinking that you are spoiling yourselves by sticking to the system and coding in some other language that they don't know. Explain the benefits to them and try to convince them. Do whatever you want to do.

I think wanting approval of your parents for what you do is something that never really goes away, deep inside. It's something fundamental, deeply ingrained in everyone (at least that is what I think). It doesn't mean that you always must do what your parents approve of, just that it's not always easy to choose your own way.

Maybe he should try to get out of house, find friends who think like him and who can support him.

I wonder what the base of it is. Does it have something to do with needing to spend your time helping your fellow man in stead of what ultimately is done only for profit? I myself sometimes feel a hole in my life because I don't really contribute anything positive to society, what I do only helps to make companies earn more bucks / have less costs.

A religion is a set of some cultures and some common habits. A religion doesn't force anyone to do any thing. If it forces, it's not a religion.

Quite an ignorant and naive statement imho. Like saying the law doesn't force people to pay taxes.

I think people are for the most part products of their own environment. Especially so in collectivistic cultures. I do agree that there's a connection between religion and culture to some extent and that some cultures have even been shaped by religion alone. In my book, there's always a book, religion is an ancient answer to the increasingly unimportant question "why are we here and where did we come from?".

I take it from the OP that he's of age to leave home in which case I'd suggest he do that and find his own answers and come up with his own ideas in and of the world.

People arguing the finer points of religion... This isn't really about religion itself.

It's about a person whose life choices could result in exclusion from it's community.

You see the same situation with people who realize they lean towards life choices not accepted by their peers: Religion, Sexual Orientation, Political Affiliation, Sports Team, Dating Choices....

The actual reasons for the situation aren't really relevant, so let's not turn this into a pro/anti religion flamewar, please. Not what this person needs to read anyway.

I second the advice that, in the end, it's all about deciding what this person truly values in life, and going for it. Any choice will be hard, but that's life, there always come points where you have to make an exclusive choice, and it rarely is an easy one.

I agree with Oskuro, this problem is rather about freedom. In my humble opinion, parents and communities shouldn't choose your job for you. Where is the limit? Who should decide for what? Maybe he should wonder why the community would have to tell him what he has to do in his daily life. I think the society shouldn't take care of my personal choices, it should rather concentrate on what it should really handle.

The question is: does your friend agree with his current religion's interpretation of the Bible? Because the thing with most religions is that all of the opinions are filtered through priests, bishops (or equivalent), etc. Nobody knows what the people who wrote the original literature meant when they wrote it, so no interpretation is necessarily right or wrong. your friend needs to decide whether the relevant passages really mean what his religion says they mean.

Again people, although meditating on the issue of freedom and belief is by no means pointless, the bottom line is that this person must now choose between risking losing its family (and possibly friends) or abandoning its career.

The question bears repeating, so I will: Is a professional career worth losing your family over?

Of course this is a very personal question, depends on your relationship with your family* and how much you value your personal independence.

It's easy to philosophize and be idealistic when it's purely a debate. It's not so easy when everything you love is on the balance.

I personally haven't been in this position myself, and I hope I'm never forced into it.

*Note: I didn't say religion, I said family. This is a situation where one cannot be separated from the other, don't forget that.

Hi, i wanted to talk about a subject like this before but i couldn't find the time so thank you "relminator" for bringing this up.

I can say that am having the same problem of your friend, Am living in a Muslim society, where religion is a sacred duty for some people, weapon for others and just a simple title to have for the rest, but what is sure, religion is a must-to-do here, there is a lot of people that don't pray or do anything religious acts, in fact, they do forbidden things and they still claim that they are "Muslims"but when someone just come and say, "am nothing, i just want to live by my own", they will rip him apart, of course not violently, but you're gonna be "the ugly duckling" in the group, me myself for example, my mom get me treated by a therapist because of this , it all started few years ago, we weer just arguing and she always mention god in her speech and i always made "fun" of him,

Quote

"do your best and god will help you""yeah, like he helped [mention-some-catastrophic-people-around-the-world]

and in that time i was kinda having an extra-metalHead look, so that much perfectly with my mother thoughts and she took me to that doctor (EPIC FUN xD ) but honestly guys i still can't tell that i 100% don't believe in god (the universe is too complicated to be a coincidence ) but religious... it's full of shitty crap man... violence,murders,wars,abuses and stupid ceremonies, VERY STUPID !! back to the subject, i believe that the easiest way to get rid of these chains is to play along with them, i don't know how he is gonna do it, but am afraid that being a rebellion will not help too much, it's too easy to convert an atheist to be a religious person, but the opposite, it's very very hard .

good luck for him

"It's not at all important to get it right the first time. It's vitally important to get it right the last time."

This is just a prejudice. An atheist can have strong convictions and personally, you have absolutely no chance of converting me. There are more than 29% of atheists and about 63% of "non believers" in France (agnostics + atheists + anti-theists including people baptised when they were too young to complain but who don't believe in any god).

This is just a prejudice. An atheist can have strong convictions and personally, you have absolutely no chance of converting me. There are more than 29% of atheists and about 63% of "non believers" in France (agnostics + atheists + anti-theists including people baptised when they were too young to complain but who don't believe in any god).

You definitely have it right. Most people who turn religious are people who weren't atheists, they were people who didn't care either way and got scared when some religious dude threatened them with an eternity in That Red Hot Place(tm).

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